---
name: "zero"
section: "4"
platform: "linux"
package: "man-pages"
version: "6.19-1"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux", "freebsd", "openbsd"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/null/4"
---

# zero(4)

data sink

Part of [null(4)](/null/4.md).

## NAME

null, zero - data sink

## DESCRIPTION

Data written to the */dev/null* and */dev/zero* special files is discarded.

Reads from */dev/null* always return end of file (i.e., [**read**(2)](/read/2.md) returns 0), whereas reads from */dev/zero* always return bytes containing zero ('\\0' characters).

These devices are typically created by:

```
mknod -m 666 /dev/null c 1 3
mknod -m 666 /dev/zero c 1 5
chown root:root /dev/null /dev/zero
```

## FILES

*/dev/null*\
 */dev/zero*

## NOTES

If these devices are not writable and readable for all users, many programs will act strangely.

Since Linux 2.6.31, reads from */dev/zero* are interruptible by signals. (This change was made to help with bad latencies for large reads from */dev/zero*.)

## SEE ALSO

[**chown**(1)](/chown/1.md), [**mknod**(1)](/mknod/1.md), [**full**(4)](/full/4.md)